In Search of Stability

...Perhaps a disproportionate share of his argument is devoted to talk of means of discouraging a Russian attack on Western Europe...

...The statesmen of the West can keep trying—with treaties and GATTS and visits and agreements of all kinds—to keep international political and economic society supplied with a vigorous circulation, to keep the world's temperature down...

...World War I, Europe's nearfatal, self-inflicted wound, is a perfect example of an "unintended" war, in the sense that it was not desired by any of the three major participants...

...that is the question...

...Strachey's main points are ordered in the following sequence: Short-run international stability requires today's pair of great powers to achieve and maintain "retaliatory forces" as nearly "invulnerable" as it is possible for them to engineer...

...For about half this book the American reader finds himself marching over ground probably more familiar to him than to Strachey's English readers—more familiar because, perhaps unfortunately, the RAND Corporation is located in Santa Monica instead of Sussex...

...Up to now the arrangement of Strachey's argument is in order, but Strachey, like the world, runs into trouble when he ponders on the day when more than two nations possess first-strike and retaliatory potentialities...

...It is from the habituation of the peoples of the world to an ever-growing intensity and diversity of international activity, not from the fanciful centralization of power Strachey recommends, not from academic "diagnostic studies of war," that attitudes will change in the way Strachey wants them to change—toward an indifference to and intolerance of war, and national policies that run the risk of war...

...To the extent that American and coalition policy has been preoccupied with this hypothetical invasion, perhaps it has been a good way off target for a long time...

...How to get it...

...Certainly every man can agree with Strachey that it is out of such a new dimension in the human consciousness that a permanently "non-war" equilibrium in affairs must spring...

...Yet the world has not necessarily lost it forever...

...author, "The Society of Space," "The Death of Africa" It is always a pleasure to encounter John Strachey's cool, pragmatic, English style of thought, and his warmly conversational style of writing...

...The test-ban issue, which Strachey properly treats independently, is something else again...

...thus we have the first indispensable step toward a more reliable stability...

...In my opinion the weaknesses of Strachey's perspective are summed up in his declaration that America's role in the future is a purely defensive one, "to prevent the involuntary inclusion by force of arms of unwilling peoples into the Communist system...

...you are dreaming to count on the rationality of half-a-dozen sets...

...Strachey touches on, but does not explore, odd ironies hidden in this doctrine...

...When Russia can boast of such a force, the United States must be entirely irrational to launch a "firststrike" or "preventive" attack upon it, and vice versa...

...But when you think what Atlantica could have accomplished in a downto-earth way for the pauper nations of Africa and Asia, deeds not likely to be undertaken by any existing organization, you see what the world has lost here in the way of a political gyrostabilizer...

...Presumably the Polaris weapon, plus the dispersion of hardened Titan and Minuteman bases, more-or-less fulfill this condition so far as America is concerned...

...With urbane competence Strachey expounds the developed views on retaliatory capability, credibility, first strikes and second strikes, equations of deterrence, etc., of the American Clausewitzes— Messrs...

...Kahn, Morgenstern, Brodie, Kissinger et al...

...These days commentators find it easy to poke fun at President Kennedy's (and Walter Lippmann's) vision of Atlantica, now that we have been spanked like saucy schoolboys by President de Gaulle...

...the best things in life are uncoordinated...

...The answer, if there is to be an answer, rests in moves of political inventiveness and grandeur toward the establishment of institutions of every description—political, economic, intellectual, ecclesiastical, etc.—which utilize and emphasize the practical interdependence of the human family, that interdependence which is the core of the Industrial Revolution's impact on history...

...He counts on a universal "fear of nuclear war," plus a "convergence of societies" (which seems far to seek in the case of China), to provide for an extension of the twonation balance of the 1950s and '60s into the era of polynucleation...

...More than any other single factor it was precipitated by berserker aristocrats in Vienna and St...

...This is true even when his thought and authorship are applied to a mind-numbing subject like the current discourse on war, half-war and peace...

...Obviously it takes plenty of nerve to depend on the permanent rationality of two sets of politicians...

...Better Red or dead than life under an Omniterrestrial OGPU...

...What is important is that there should grow up in the world innumerable dynamic, creative interests which cross frontiers, and other competing interests, in every direction, giving a rich pluralism to the weave of international life or, to change the figure, ballast when the inevitable storms of political hysteria must be survived...

...But who feels confident that either fear or convergence will prove strong enough for this job...

...And if you can say this much you are really complimenting a writer...

...scholars like Adam Ulam of Harvard deny that it has ever made the slightest preparations for such an attack...

...In addition to the invulnerable retaliatory force, each country must also maintain top-notch conventional units, ready to fight on call in the Vietnams of the future without the world's running the risk of an "escalation" into all-out thermonuclear attack and counterattack...

...Such a prospect is not an adequate challenge to or employment of America's strength, and it is not at all likely to tame such a problem as that presented by China...

...Nevertheless, because "nuclear war has become unacceptable," Strachey manfully takes on the burden...

...and that is where we disagree with Strachey...

...Strachey does not suggest, as has been suggested by a few American analysts, that the disposition of these American retaliatory forces should be made an open secret, so that the Russians will know how irrational they must be to attack us...

...Second, the creation and maintenance of an overwhelming retaliatory force is perhaps the best way for politicians to minimize the influence on national policy of militarist truculence, or in America's case the vested interests of the "military-industrial complex...

...Nor does even a longterm answer lie in the direction of creating a "single world authority with irresistible power [that can] wipe out any rebellion within a few days" (Lord Russell, quoted approvingly by Strachey...

...he may well be afraid...

...First, at the present time disarmament, or even an inflexible scheme of arms control, is not altogether desirable—at least not for Russia and the United States—because the deterrent effect of any retaliatory force hinges on its being absolutely premium-grade and upto-the-last-minute...

...Many people cannot see that Russia ever has had a motive for a military attack on Western Europe...

...Petersburg, abetted by the stupidity of the Kaiser and, in a less culpable way, by the untimely inertia of Sir Edward Grey...

...It is not important that these institutions be coordinated by a great agency to a single, simple purpose...

...But a mild, understandable obsession with Europe does not do much harm to the tone of what Strachey has to say...

...Clearly Strachey is afraid that wild men and/or ignorant men in Peking may one day entangle Russia and America in a similarly unwanted holocaust...

...As everyone who has tried to keep up with it knows, the intellectual refinement of this literature has reached a point of such Byzantine preciosity that one wonders whether there has ever existed in the history of the world a politician or military commander capable of comprehending it or acting upon it...

...People should stop thinking about coordinating everything...